Nikole Hannah-Jones Praised Socialism for Making Cuba ‘Most Equal Multi-Racial Country in Our Hemisphere’

Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times.
Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo/Flickr

The New York Times journalist who led the slavery-focused “1619 Project” praised Cuba during a 2019 interview as the “most equal multi-racial country in our hemisphere,” owing its success in that regard to socialism.

The National Pulse uncovered Hannah-Jones’s interview with Vox co-founder and Times columnist Ezra Klein, who was among the U.S. journalists who traveled under the sponsorship of a group with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, in exchange for “favorable coverage” of the regime.

While in a discussion with Klein, during his podcast “Conversations,” Hannah-Jones admitted she is “definitely not an expert on race relations internationally,” but nevertheless asserted Cuba’s handling of integration should serve as a role model to America.

“If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ … it’s not a democracy – the most equal, multi-racial country in our hemisphere it would be Cuba,” she said, adding she views its success in this endeavor as due largely to socialism:

Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere. I mean the Caribbean – most of the Caribbean it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small, they’re countries run by black folks, but in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.

Hannah-Jones’s words are brought to light as Cubans are vehemently protesting the communist regime in their country, condemning the decades-long dictatorship.

Last week, Cubans also protested in south Florida, placing blame directly on the communist regime.

“It is misinformation that COVID and hunger is causing the protests in Cuba,” said protester and local singer Yenier Alvarino. “That’s not the truth. People are tired of the government. They are tired of not being free, and that’s what they are fighting for.”

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter organizers have defended Cuba’s communist regime and, along with American left-wing media, have blamed the Trump administration’s sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic for the uprisings.

In a prior column at the Oregonian titled “The Cuba We Don’t Know” – one that was originally posted in September 2008 and updated in March 2019 – Hannah-Jones described her visit to Cuba with six other journalists.

“While there, I found a Cuba you may not know,” she wrote. “A Cuba with a 99.8 percent literacy rate, the lowest HIV infection rate in the Western Hemisphere, free college and health care.”

She praised “what Cuba has accomplished, through socialism and despite poverty, that the United States hasn’t,” and wrote black Cubans are particularly protective of the Castro regime:

Black Cubans especially are wary of outsiders wishing to overthrow the Castro regime. They admit the revolution has been imperfect, but it also led to the end of codified racism and brought universal education and access to jobs to black Cubans. Without the revolution, they wonder, where would they be?

Hannah-Jones was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her “1619 Project,” even though, following criticism from noted historians, the Times ultimately scrapped its central theme that the true founding of America was 1619, the year the first slaves were brought to the colonies.

Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said in September, the “1619 Project” is “one of the most significant attempts to propagandize history” he has seen in his lifetime.

This is “an all-hands-on-deck situation,” he warned during a National Association of Scholars web conference.

“We have seen what I believe to be a corruption of history, a distortion of history,” he asserted, adding that Hannah-Jones “is using the tools of a 20th-century form of oppression, to consciously, or not, present her version of, and that of many on the left’s, version of slavery in the United States.”

“And it is nothing more than sheer propaganda,” Kirsanow emphasized.

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